Learn if we should be afraid of bats with a bat expert
Learn if we should be afraid of bats with a bat expert
Overview of the bat.
Contunico © ZDF Studios GmbH, Mainz
Transcript
NARRATOR: Bats are only active at night and live hidden away in caves and in attics. The common perception is that one must be weary of them. After all, Dracula, the blood-sucking beast, is said to have regularly transformed himself into a bat. A group of brave children from Altenkirchen, Germany sets out in search of the truth. Even today, too many people continue to have unwarranted fear of bats. They head up to the top of the church tower with bat expert Markus. In the summer, bats often inhabit places like this and in old attics.
MARKUS EHM: "Bats should really be called glove flyers. If you look at a bat's hand you can see that they have thumbs and extremely long finger-like elongations with webbing between them. This webbing helps them fly. Bats are nocturnal animals and they don't use their eyes to determine where they are going, instead we can basically say that they can see with their ears."
NARRATOR: Bats send out ultrasonic sounds that are undetectable by the human ear. If these sounds bounce off objects or insects an echo is sent back to the bat. The bat hears these echoes and, using its ears, can determine exactly where something is located and where it needs to go to hunt for that tasty butterfly.
EHM: "There is a machine, it's called a bat detector. This machine allows us to hear the sounds bats make. Every bat has its very own sound. In Germany there are 26 different bat species and they all feed only on insects. There are no bats in Europe who nourish themselves with blood. That's just a perception that has remained in people's heads. There are bats that nourish themselves with blood, but there are only three species that do that out of the thousands of bat species in the world, and they are native to Central and South America.
Here we have a bat skull from a serotine bat. You can imagine just how they can chomp down with those jaws when you see it next to a child's finger like this. Bats are very endangered animals. They are almost all on the Red List of Threatened Species. In the summer they like to take up residences in places like attics or in holes in trees."
NARRATOR: In winter the airy attics are far too chilly for the bats. Bats like to hibernate in caves, where the temperature remains between four and eight degrees celcius. But they are having an increasingly difficult time finding sheltered places even in summertime. So bats have got nothing to do with Dracula. In reality they are very nice little animals, and they are very helpful as they keep insect populations down.
MARKUS EHM: "Bats should really be called glove flyers. If you look at a bat's hand you can see that they have thumbs and extremely long finger-like elongations with webbing between them. This webbing helps them fly. Bats are nocturnal animals and they don't use their eyes to determine where they are going, instead we can basically say that they can see with their ears."
NARRATOR: Bats send out ultrasonic sounds that are undetectable by the human ear. If these sounds bounce off objects or insects an echo is sent back to the bat. The bat hears these echoes and, using its ears, can determine exactly where something is located and where it needs to go to hunt for that tasty butterfly.
EHM: "There is a machine, it's called a bat detector. This machine allows us to hear the sounds bats make. Every bat has its very own sound. In Germany there are 26 different bat species and they all feed only on insects. There are no bats in Europe who nourish themselves with blood. That's just a perception that has remained in people's heads. There are bats that nourish themselves with blood, but there are only three species that do that out of the thousands of bat species in the world, and they are native to Central and South America.
Here we have a bat skull from a serotine bat. You can imagine just how they can chomp down with those jaws when you see it next to a child's finger like this. Bats are very endangered animals. They are almost all on the Red List of Threatened Species. In the summer they like to take up residences in places like attics or in holes in trees."
NARRATOR: In winter the airy attics are far too chilly for the bats. Bats like to hibernate in caves, where the temperature remains between four and eight degrees celcius. But they are having an increasingly difficult time finding sheltered places even in summertime. So bats have got nothing to do with Dracula. In reality they are very nice little animals, and they are very helpful as they keep insect populations down.